We don’t think anyone would have trouble appreciating Italian food, but how to get people interested in learning about Italian cuisine, using Italian words?

What about introducing people to the joy of Italian cinema and music – from Italian opera to modern singers?

We Britons love Italy so much that we book on average more than two million trips per year to the country shaped like a boot, but can we actually say more than ciao! and grazie mille?

And will we venture out of the Tuscan region, to Sardinia? Sicily? Venice? Florence?

This is in fact one of the best ways you can grow your tutoring business.

Talk with your family: tell them you wish to help them learn Italian before their next holiday.

Parents, grandparents; aunts and uncles: spare nobody! Because, even if they are not onboard with the idea of growing their language skills, they may well have friends and colleagues who are.

What is even better is if they do participate in language instruction with you, they may well encourage extended family, friends and even their colleagues to do the same!

Finding Prospects on Social Networks

Guiding a language learner through the intricacies of Italian grammar and vocabulary is a captivating journey.

If your student is an absolute beginner, you will have to teach the Italian alphabet before anything else, as it is a bit different than in English.

From there you would progress to words and phrases, in tandem with rules for word usage:

nouns and pronouns – both personal and possessive

gender assignment for nouns and articles

descriptives – adverbs and adjectives

word order and sentence structure

verb conjugation

Finally, you would drill in Oral Italian: that entrancing, mellifluous quality only heard in Italian pronunciation.

There should be absolutely no doubt that you can impart all of that knowledge before you log on to social media and find any students.

Bear in mind that friends and family are generally less demanding and more forgiving. Beyond them, the expectations placed on a teacher of languages is much higher.

As you advertise your language online teaching jobs on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Linkdin and Twitter, you are communicating that your students can expect the highest quality of instruction.

Your community of cyber-friends is another adit you can mine for that gem of a student to validate your teaching methodology.

If your besties are currently not in the market for language learning, how about asking if any of their other friends are?

While you are promoting your language lessons, be sure to state your fees. A reasonable tariff may be just the inducement to signing up for the Italian courses you teach!

Mine your social connexions for that gem of a student Source: Pixabay Credit: Tunaolger

Night Classes, Summer Classes, or Seminars: Canvassing Door to Door

Social Media permits you to cast a wide net in the search for the aspiring Italophone, but your neighbours are much closer.

They know you better, too!

Whether you are a native speaker of Italian or have mastered la lingua italia as a second language, marketing your skills face to face is the tried-and-true method of impressing you capabilities on potential clients.

If your neighbour works in a large office, talking with her about night classes for her department: seminars or intensive workshops that will help develop an appreciation for global enterprise would be a good suggestion.

If the person in the house next to you has young children enrolled at school, propose courses in Basic Italian that they could continue during the language development phase of their formal education.

If their children are a year or two away from GCSE, plant the seed of success by averring their exam could rate higher if they select a language component.

And what a boost a second language would be on their CV!

With such versatility of teaching and variations of level, you will most likely have generated sufficient interest in your teaching programme to build a satisfactory client base.

And imagine the convenience of teaching close to home!

Approaching your neighbours may not even need to be a door-to-door affair. After all, people do have busy lives and you might waste a lot of time trying to find them at home.

What can you do be to sure you have offered your teaching services equitably, to every neighbour, even the busy ones?

Printing fliers would be one solution.

The advantage with this method is that you can concisely list answers to questions your prospects did not know they had:

All of those language learners warm our hearts, but you and I know that they cannot become fluent in Italian by doing a few exercises online.

At the least, learning the language of Roberto Benigni requires frequent pronunciation drills and vocabulary building exercises.

At most, immersion is recommended through, let’s be bold!, an extended trip to Italy.

Back to reality, now.

Our prospective clients should not sojourn in Italy. If they did, we would have no one to teach Italian to!

Or, they should wait until we’ve taught them, and then they can sojourn!

Likewise, those looking for free Italian lessons may not be fully satisfied with their learning experience.

That is why it is all down to you.

Listing your services and abilities with a site such as Superprof permits you to reach out to a multitude of students who need you to show them the best way to learn Italian.

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Sophia

A vagabond traveler whose first love is the written word, I advocate for continuous learning, cycling, and the joy only a beloved pet can bring. There is plenty else I am passionate about, but those three should do it, for now.